Agapius the Hermit of Agapia Veche

Agapius was a hermit and priest of the fifteenth century, the first known hermit of the mountains between Secu and Agapia and the true founder of the Agapia Veche hermitage. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

He lived first in the community of Neamț Monastery, in the early fifteenth century, and received priesthood there. Loving prayer and the ascetic life, he withdrew to the mountain that separates Secu Monastery from Agapia, where there were solitary clearings suited to stillness. For many years he struggled alone, in fasting and prayer, enduring, the Paterikon says, many temptations.

When his name became known, a few disciples from the Neamț community came to him and built wooden cells nearby. So arose the first and best-⁠known hermitage around Neamț. As the hermits multiplied, Agapius built with them a small wooden church in the clearing that bears his name, dedicated to the Transfiguration. Agapius's Hermitage took shape around the middle of the fifteenth century.

Many monks and lay people sought him out, asked him for a word of benefit and wished to be his disciples. The rule was this: all week the disciples laboured alone in the mountain, and on feast days they came down to the skete, kept an all-⁠night vigil, served the Liturgy and communed, then withdrew again to stillness.

Agapius reposed in peace in great old age and was buried beside the church. From him the monasteries of Agapia Veche and Agapia Nouă take their names, as do Agapius's Clearing, the mountain and the stream of Agapius.